Oh, Goody. A Space Trial. My Favorite.

Before I get to today's two episodes from The Ark, I have to crow a bit. This morning marks the two-month anniversary of this project, and this morning for the first time I weighed in a full 20 lbs lighter than when I started the project. It will take a few more days for the moving average to catch up, but my daily weight was there. That's an average of 10 lbs per month lost, which is right there on the aggressive end of my goal of 1-2 lbs per week. Since we know that trends never, ever change and always carry on forever, I think it is safe to presume that by the time I finish this project after about two years I will weigh roughly 67 lbs. So that will be pretty awesome.

One of the great travesties of Doctor Who is that stories like Marco Polo and The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve are (almost certainly) lost forever, whereas stories like Planet of Giants and The Ark are completely intact. It is such a letdown to finish such an amazing historical episode and then have to watch... this.

In broad strokes: The TARDIS materializes on a spaceship some millions of years into the future, which is carrying the entirety of the human, animal, and plant population of Earth on to a new home world. The Earth itself is about to die, and this generational ship is making a 700+ year voyage to colonize a new planet. There is also a non-human race called the Monoids on the ship, so called because they have a single eye located where a human mouth would be. When the the TARDIS group arrives, Dodo is already being as annoying as she can possibly be. Then she becomes straight-up deadly, because she has a cold and manages to spread the virus to both the human and monoid populations, neither of whom have any natural immunity. Several monoids die, and several humans get very ill including the Commander of the vessel. So of course the humans do the only sensible thing, which is to lock up the Doctor, Steven, and Dodo and then put them on trial for sabotage. Of course they are found guilty, and are sentenced to be tossed out the airlock. After wasting most of an episode on a ridiculous space trial, they are all found guilty and are sentenced to be ejected into space. At the last minute the Commander spares them, and has the Doctor try to find a cure for the disease instead. Of course he does, and everyone is saved. Hooray. The group leaves, the TARDIS dematerializes, and then rematerializes in exactly the same spot but 700 years later. Roll credits.

Have I mentioned that I hate space trials? It seems like every science fiction program has to have at least one, if not several of them, and they are never any good. On a side note, just ask me how much I am looking forward to Doctor Who wasting an entire 14 episodes on a space trial in The Trial of a Time Lord, coming up in the 23rd season...

So yeah, I don't have much to say about The Ark. So far I hate it, although not quite as much as Planet of Giants. Maybe the second half of the story will improve, but I am not optimistic. So far I also hate Dodo, and I am thrilled that she will only appear in four stories after this. By next weekend she will be an unlamented memory. Before too much longer it is going to be Ben and Polly, and that's an era I can really get behind.

Michael Montoure said:
A little off-topic here, but I wouldn't say space trials are *never* good. "The Measure of a Man" is one of the best Star Trek: TNG episodes ever, and that's basically a space trial. I will agree, though, that Doctor Who has generally not handled them well, with the exception of "The War Games," and that scene is helped by being mercifully brief.